In Media Res
by heeeter
Summary: Don't pass up the chance to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. Sometimes, this teaches you a valuable lesson about life, human nature, and your inner self. Sometimes, you'll find peace in knowing someone else's struggles. Except sometimes, it's just dangerous.
1. exposition

**hey fuckers im back**

 **uhhh who knows how often ill update this, if at all. but i started this a few weeks ago and i guess im proud of how its looking and i want to keep writing it. who knows if The Sickness will allow it to happen but we can Hope eh**

 **anyway its an "OC ends up in so-and-so universe" kinda deal. with a wee bit of a twist, to make an interesting story. because i obviously still have the same tastes in fic as i did when i was 12, except with higher standards i guess. anyway have fun hopefully u'll see me again soon**

 **edit: and of fucking course as soon as i post this thing it turns into a string of html bullshit so if i missed any of those ridiculous html tags in here hmu so i can remove them**

 **...**

They don't write in English on Gaia.

It's weird, because in the places I've been so far, everyone seems to speak various, if oddly-accented, dialects of English, but the first time I picked up a book – though it wasn't a book, if I recall correctly, it was a receipt found on the ground in Wall Market near the spicy Korean restaurant I had eaten at on my first day in Gaia, trampled and muddy but ultimately legible – well, it was in a strange mixture of what I assumed was Japanese and obviously Roman characters. Together, they didn't actually mean anything to me.

By that point, of course, I had already figured out that the new planet I found myself on didn't have the same writing system as mine had, simply by looking at the neon lights of the Midgar Slums, but the moment I picked up that receipt was the moment it really sunk in that in this place, I was illiterate. I would never be able to pick up a trashy novel from a gas station to pass the time, I would never be able to read a menu by myself, I would never be able to get a job that wasn't hard labor or petty crime. I'll have to learn to read all over again, and who would want to teach me? All in all, a devastating blow for a former English major.

This is the only reason I feel safe writing this down. No one will ever be able to read the secrets I reveal here. Though I guess it'll be a bitch to have to explain to whatever nosy punk happens across this memoir of mine why a supposed illiterate young vagrant has a journal full of strange, unreadable letters in diary format, but I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

I suppose, like all good stories, this one _should_ begin at the beginning – but then, I'm not sure the rules of English literature exactly apply on a planet where "English" isn't even a word. I'll start now. I want to get my thoughts down. I want to plan for the future. If I have one.

I am currently on a chocobo farm, living the dream. If, of course, by "living the dream," one means "shoveling green-tinted guano and chasing enormous, hellishly _fast_ chickens halfway across a marsh every goddamn time the little kid leaves the gate unlocked." I've been on Gaia for perhaps a month – I've barely had enough time for it to sink in that I'm on another planet entirely. But somehow it has.

I still don't know where, in the game series, I am – I would try to judge by the Choco family's ages, but I never really knew how old they were in the game; I don't think I ever paid that much attention to something so minuscule. Both of the children are present, so it can't be too far in the past – it's _probably_ past Turk Vincent-era, at least. Midgar exists and, to my knowledge, the City of Dreams has not been razed anytime recently. Nothing else has clued me in to when I must have ended up; after all, being in the Slums was not very conducive to hearing relevant, recent information, and I got out of there as fast as I could. Living out in the boonies, as one may infer, is even less informative. The Choco family doesn't have anything as fanciful and modern as a television, and their only radio only functions when you stroke its antennae just the right way on a Sunday evening.

The journey I've taken to get here, way out in the countryside away from any possible terrorist attacks or meteor strikes or homicidal science experiments, isn't the most exciting tale. Not by story standards. But it is a tale, nonetheless, and if anything can keep me sane on this trainwreck of a world, it will be the excitement and fervor of telling a good story. Even if it's somewhat lacking in actual fervor and a little more "horrifying" than exciting.

It began with terror and screaming and blood, as beginning new lives is wont to.

One moment, I was laying down to bed at one in the morning – just after finally finishing a sub-par essay over _The Nibelungen_ for my earliest class the next day, my headphones playing soft Celtic music (I had picked up some strange habits during college, but anything that kept me calm and helped me get to sleep during midterms was a godsend) – and the next, I was in another bed, another world, with a half-naked man with a knife in his left eye socket slumping over my horrified form.

What a way to wake up.

I'd rather skip over the panic, the terror, and the angry voices outside that locked door – I had no idea what had happened in that bedroom before I woke up in it, but it seemed as though whoever's... _body_... this one had been before I came into it had been in a great deal of trouble.

Spattered with blood and wearing something _positively indecent_ , even for a relatively open-minded college girl like myself, I climbed out the lace-curtained window and out onto a dark, filthy street – where I immediately vomited twice. I left the scene soon after, sobbing, afraid, and worst of all – unnoticed. There were people. They definitely saw me. But either they didn't want to get involved in any trouble, or they were just too inured to a scene like that to take any pity on a woman like me.

The woman who had been in that room, who had killed that man with that knife - she was gone. I'll never know where. Maybe she's woken up in my body on Earth, and is going around to brothels with my name, killing people with my face. Maybe it was just an accident – a client (for I eventually realized that the place I woke up was a room at the _Honey Bee Inn_ , a fact I was again horrified to discover) who had gotten a little too violent. Maybe there was something deeper going on. I would never know.

She'd probably left some belongings in that room. An ID, maybe, or some money. I wasn't in there long enough to find out, but a few gil would have been useful. A pair of decent clothes would have been useful. Instead, all I had was an unfamiliar body and the blood of a man its hands had killed.

The memory of his eye – the one he had left – won't leave me. I want so badly to write it off as "This world is cruel" and leave it there, as though something like that could never happen outside of Gaia, but I know that the same exact thing could happen, maybe has happened, in my world – and had it happened, I would have been caught and imprisoned for the deed much more quickly on Earth.

As it is, I haven't been found by any authorities yet. I don't think Shin-Ra prioritizes solving the murders of random men by random sex workers, though they might be cracking down on security at the Honey Bee Inn a little more now that someone's been killed there. If I recall correctly, President Shinra – the old one – frequented the place in the original game. Or maybe not him, and just some Shin-Ra employees. Whatever. I'm getting ahead of myself.

After I left the brothel, I found a dark alley to curl up in and freak out – at that point, I didn't even realize where I was. I only knew that I had gone to bed one place and woken up in an infinitely worse place with a body I didn't recognize.

Looking back, that was a pretty dangerous way to spend my first day in the slums, but for the most part, the loud sobbing kept anyone with ill intent from bothering with me – already I was too attention-grabbing. The blood spatters may have helped even more.

By the time I took my head out of my hands, the lights of the city had dimmed... yet the slums were as dark as they ever were; the only difference was in the number of neon names lighting the stilted streets. My hiccups and heart palpitations had finally subsided, and without them I felt empty and dazed – I almost decided then that I was dreaming. But the dried blood was too vivid, the stench of the slums too strong.

I wanted to sit there until I died, but someone outside the alley shouted, and the fear that clenched around my heart then – even though they weren't in view, even though they weren't directing their rage at me – it made my brain leap back into action. I was exhausted, drained, and I needed somewhere safe to lie low – somewhere the police wouldn't find me, somewhere I could sleep, somewhere I could get some actual _clothes_.

First, I wanted to know where I was.

Very few people were on the streets when I staggered out of my corner on too-high heels and unsteady feet; those few that I saw were either asleep or pretending to be. Too afraid to wake one of them up, I instead followed the glow of neon close by – a busier district was bound to have a few late-night shoppers.

This was approximately when I stumbled into a brightly-lit marketplace and picked a receipt up off the ground and realized I wasn't in Kansas anymore. God, my English professor would murder me for quoting that in all seriousness, but the thought had passed through my head the moment I stepped into that neon pit.

The market was populated with shoppers even then, but the late hour meant no one was willing to make eye contact with another person, let alone answer a question from a dirty, frazzled, ill-clothed woman – but I still felt watched, still felt out of place and extraterrestrial and under-dressed. I ducked into the first rickety building I found, teeth clenched tight and shivering not from cold, but from nerves.

The smell of spices and seafood filled the restaurant and the familiar clacking of dishes and the bell over the door and rapid-sizzling fryers made me calm down just a notch. If I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend I was just clocking in for a late shift at the 8 China Buffet – if it wasn't for the grime still sticking to my skin and the chill of the stale night air across my bare legs. I took a seat at the bar, trying to catch the cashier's eye – but the man working the counter took one look at my appearance and scowled before looking away.

"If you ain't got gil, you can get out. We don't do handouts, kid."

 _Kid_. I suddenly wondered how young this body was, and how young it looked, and bile rose in my throat. I took a minute to force it back down. The man went back to taking orders from the customers who had money, apparently confident that if I thought I couldn't get a free meal, I would leave. I didn't even notice the word gil – my mind had jumped straight over it and onto _kid_.

I tried to catch his eye again, using a pleading tone of voice. "I'm not here for a meal, please – I just want to—"

"If you ain't here to eat, you can get out. No loitering," he snapped with the same brusque, angry tone as before – the words were his only acknowledgment that he'd even noticed me there. Other patrons were beginning to look my way, if they weren't already. The old couple a few chairs down sent us glares.

" _Please_ , I only want to ask one question—" I tried again, stressing my words in an attempt to get through to someone, anyone. Again, interrupted.

"Can't you see you aren't _wanted_ here, girl?" a grungy man a few chairs down snapped.

I flinched, but I couldn't leave without an answer, and I was too stretched thin to be polite anymore and too frustrated to keep my voice down. "I _just_ want to know where in the seven hells I am!"

The man at the counter stopped pretending not to notice me – he put his fist on the counter like he was trying not to punch it. "Yer in _my_ restaurant, exactly where you _shouldn't_ be," he growled, and I should have been angry but I was mostly afraid, "and if you don't leave in twenty seconds I'm going to get my shotgun—"

" _Richerd_ , don't you dare," a woman from the kitchens nearly shrieks. "Last time you brought that old thing out you nearly shot your _self_ , you brutish fool of a man. Just answer the damn girl's questions and she'll leave – _isn't that right_ , girl?" She was leaning around a hot stove with a knife in hand, and the look on her face was almost as scary as the man's. _What kind of lawless hole is this place?_ I thought outrageously as I nodded with wide eyes.

"Fine! God damn it, Mertle, if you weren't here—" the woman gave him a _look_ and he stopped himself. "Whaddaya want, harlot?"

I swallowed my rage at the chance to find some answers. "Where are we? What country? What city?"

"What kind of _stupid question_ —" Mertle cleared her throat; the other patrons of the restaurant had gone back to eating their food and pretending not to listen, waiting for me to finally leave. "This is Midgar, kid – how much did you drink this morning to end up here in the city of dreams and not know it?"

 _Midgar? What, am I in Scandinavia?_ "What country?" I pushed.

"Ha! Whaddaya mean ' _what country_ '? There's only two countries, and there's only one Midgar. I can tell ya, this ain't fuckin _Wutai_ , if that's what yer thinking."

 _Wutai. Midgar._

I said thanks and left, very quietly now. The bell over the door chimed loudly as it closed behind me, and I could feel my heart beating in the back of my head at almost the same volume. My knees felt like they might give out, so I leaned against the wall for a moment or maybe forever.

The bell chimed again.

"Hungry?"

I didn't recognize her face or her scratchy smoker's voice – it seemed like every voice I'd heard in the Slums were that way, choked by dust and debris and starved of clean air. But the woman's hair I dimly recognized – grey, frizzy, and wrenched up in a tight bun, leaving the heavily weathered and spotted face free of obstruction. I remembered her as an older woman who had sat in the far corner of the shop and watched silently, neither condemning nor welcoming, her food going cold. I stared at her and couldn't remember how to speak.

She shoved a half-full box of rice into my hands and turned to leave without another word. Cold. Impersonal. Yet it was a more generous offer than I'd seen in my time in Midgar. I managed to offer a sort of quiet thank-you, but I don't think she ever heard it.

That was the first act of kindness anyone had taken towards me on Gaia – and for a long while after that, it would be the only one.

...

 **yeah so pls give me some feedback im always a slut for commentary**

 **i have a good bit of this planned out but as always, i am diving in headfirst with no idea how im gonna resolve things in the end. im sure ill pull through with a bombastic ending eventually, if we ever get there. fingers crossed eh**

 **there will also be some main characters in here. eventually. turks, most likely. possibly some others later on. like i said, i have only planned so far. i know how irresponsible this is but i hope you will still enjoy what i DO manage to pump out**

 **also.**

 **she will not become a SOLDIER. ive noticed there are quite a few "first 'female' soldier" fics floating around right now and let me just preemptively say this is not one. our little oc is a cowardly baby who i want to protect. but ill put her through a lot of shit anyway because, yknow, You Gotta**


	2. mild tension

**surprise bitch. bet you thought youd seen the last of me**

 **had half of this written and only just now pulled through with the rest. it probably doesnt have a lot of errors but i havent really slaved over it any either so it aint great**

* * *

My heart is pounding in my ears. I feel like I've just run a marathon but I _haven't_ , I just - nearly fainted from fear.

They came to the ranch today.

No, wait. I'm getting ahead of the story again. I need to slow down. I need to take a deep breath. I need to remember that this isn't a diary. I feel like I just narrowly avoided my death.

 _They came to the ranch_. Part of me is surprised I am still alive. The other part is still in denial.

So. Let me roll back a little. This part needs some set-up.

We had a nice, mutually-beneficial arrangement, Bill and I. Neither of us was particularly fond of the other, mainly due to his first impression of me being that of a scantily-clad, flat-ass broke woman with dried blood under her nails, who looked exactly like a woman who was on the run from the law - he came at me with a rake, actually, but we figured it out eventually. Despite all that, we had a working, if impersonal, system. Bill provided food, a bed, and clothes, and I did at least two thirds of the work around the ranch.

My duties generally involved whatever odd jobs old Bill or the kids were ill suited for or too "busy" (lazy) to perform. This list of chores included, but was not limited to: shoveling hay; chasing runaway chocobos; fixing the roof on one horrible, unkind occasion; beating minor monsters away with a stick while the kids banged on pots and pans and shrieked at the top of their lungs to scare them (and that had happened twice; it terrified me both times); and worst of all: mucking the stables.

When one normally looks at an enormous, yellow, flightless bird and finds themselves considering the appearance or consistency of their excrement, the image that comes to mind is normally guano, yes? The same white, icky goo that splatters across windshields on a hot, sunny day or by some unfortunate happenstance lands and soaks into an unlucky young man's hair. Bird poop, basically. Chocobos, like all birds, produce a _lot_ of guano. The floor of the stable can be spotless in the morning, and covered in a centimeter-thick layer of sludge by evening. It sticks to your shoes, it suctions itself to the floor, and best of all, it smells exactly like one would expect liquified gysahl greens to smell.

This was the horrible task I was working my way through when they came. It was, what, a week since I'd arrived at the ranch? I'd cleaned the stables twice before, and each time it became easier to block out the scent of hay and poo - especially when I tied a towel around my face to keep the fumes out. It minimized the urge to vomit.

They arrived in a Jeep, or the Shin-Ra equivalent, at least. The barn doors were wide open and the chocobos roaming their vast pen - which, by the way, was far larger than the game depicted, and the fences much higher. Chocobos were excellent jumpers. Trust me, I've chased a few myself. I'm veering off topic again. My mind feels scrambled. My hands are shaking.

For me, it was mid-winter before I found myself in the Honey Bee Inn, but by Gaia's calendar, Midgar and the surrounding countryland were experiencing a hot, dry summer. The change had not been easily handled. I wore some of old Bill's hand-me-downs - fairly roomy, so they didn't stick to my sweaty skin so much - but the pair of boots he claimed were once his late wife's were far too small on me. My feet used to fit into a small, dainty 7 ½ on Earth. Now, in Gaia, I wouldn't be surprised if I wore size 9s, and I felt clumsy for it. The pile of goop just outside the stables steadily grew in size as I grouchily tromped to and fro in my too-small shoes, sweat pouring off of me in spades and the smell of shit, worsened by the heat, saturating the air. This was the fascinating portrait seen by the passengers of the Shin-Ra military-issue Jeep as it crunched up the ranch's gravel driveway.

Their next scintillating sight was of me flinging my shovel down into the goo pile, sprinting back into the barn, clambering up a ladder, and then throwing myself into a horribly humid hayloft and tumbling into a pile of sticky hay that clung to every drop of sweat on my flushed skin.

Choco Bill was out that day, travelling northwards to buy some special greens from someone I had unsurprisingly never heard of. The kids were god-knows-where - I didn't bother keeping track of them, because they were almost always off skiving chores and if I found out they were skiving I'd have to either confront them about it or do the chore myself, which I was never happy to do. I was the only grown-up around for miles. No one was going to deal with this for me; a responsible adult would shake off her trepidation, swipe the hay dust off her shoulders, and climb back down there to calmly greet her visitors and ask what she could do to help them. Then she'd wave them off as quickly as she possibly could and deal with her terror later.

I was not a responsible adult. I stayed up in my hayloft, cowering behind a fragrant stack of hay bales, wringing my towel-mask in my hands, unable to stop trembling.

 _They found me, oh god, they found me_ , I thought, _they found me and now they're going to arrest me and throw me in jail, or worse they'll turn me over to Hojo to test on because god knows the man always needs more subjects how many of them die per week I bet -_

"Hey! Is someone up there?" a soldier called. One of them approached the barn. I wasn't well hidden, not when the entire group saw me dive into the loft, but no one had climbed up the ladder yet. I shuffled back, almost crab-walking, deeper into the hay stacks. My feet and elbows banged loudly against the floor. "Is this your farm? Hey, do you hear me? Come out!"

I thought about shouting for them to go away. I thought about telling them I was only a worker and I couldn't talk to them. My throat couldn't form the sounds. It took everything I had just to breathe; there was no room for words.

I heard another soldier approach and take the other's attention. They conversed quietly for a moment, before the new one shouted, "Get down from there, or we'll just seize the chocobos we need without compensation. We're on the clock, here."

The chocobos.

They just wanted chocobos.

The fact felt like an electric shock. I wasn't in any trouble. The knowledge kick-started my brain again, and I started the slow and steady process of calming down from my panic, taking deep breaths and mentally reassuring myself every few seconds that I was _fine_ , and I was going to _be_ fine. I just needed to woman up and go out there and be the faithful employee this ranch needed and get these boys out of my barn.

I heard feet on the ladder and my efforts to calm myself were wrecked in seconds.

"Hey, you. In the hay. What the hell are you doing in there?" he groused. His helmet obscured his eyes, but there was a scrunched up scowl on the lower half of his face. "No, whatever, I don't care. Are you the owner of this farm?"

I was a deer, faced with a drunk driver who had his brights on in the middle of rural suburbia at seven in the evening. I shook my head fervently and waited for the car to hit.

"Where are they, then?" the soldier demanded. "We need birds. Immediately. We're going into the marsh."

"H-he's not… here," I managed, hoping he'd leave with that information and come back later. The soldier's body language told me that wasn't enough. The sooner they got what they wanted, I told myself, the sooner they would go. "I - I can rent some to you. Just… hold on a s-second."

I stood on quivering legs. I tried to avoid looking at the soldier, but from the corner of my eye, I noticed he was staring. I made my way down the ladder with care. I avoided looking at anyone.

"Man, what's up with you, lady?" said the one in the hayloft as he started down the ladder. The soldier must have been out of sorts, or maybe, now that I think of it, distracted by the fact that someone had just had a panic attack due to his squad's presence; his foot slipped on the last step and he fell flat on his ass in a puddle of guano. Maybe the ladder had just been slick from my boots.

He cussed up a storm and his fellows laughed uproariously. The tension left the air like a popped balloon; I relaxed just a fraction as I trudged out to the corralls, where the birds were running around and doing their bird things and enjoying the good weather. They weren't bothered by the heat, unlike some of us.

I turned to count the men. One, two, four, five, and - SOLDIER. What?

Huge sword on his back, glowy eyes. He wasn't one I recognized but the sight still sent a chill down my spine. What kind of mission did they need a guy like him for? I hurriedly turned back to the gate. Six of them. Six chocobos.

They'd better not be taking on a Zolom. I swear, if they get those chocobos killed, I'll wring their necks myself. I gave them one of my favorites. Cloudy was the gentlest chocobo I knew. He never even tried to escape. And he liked to nuzzle people, a bribe for more greens. He was a sweetheart and I miss him already.

Right. I managed to rattle off the details of renting a chocobo from Choco Bill's, including when they should bring them back - as longer rentals cost more gil - and tips on what to avoid when on a chocobo in the marsh. Like Zoloms. I didn't know much from experience, but Bill kept a list of helpful information like that. No one liked when a bird disappeared into that swampy hole. Least of all the man whose livelihood depended on them.

They left, and I had time to freak out some more. Now I'm writing this. It's helped me calm down. I can sort through what's happened and what it means for me: which is jack shit, actually. They were just a bunch of cannon fodder, with no influence on the game at all. Even the SOLDIER was probably unimportant. Which class had he even been? I didn't remember the distinctions. Either way, they'd forget about me. They had no reason to report me to anyone. I was safe.

Unless they mention the weird lady who freaked out when she saw them, and someone important hears it and thinks, "Wow, that sounds like something a murderous criminal would do, why don't we check that out?" Then the law enforcement would descend and I'd be taken into custody and tortured for information on my assassination employers. Contractors. Whatever.

That was the worst-case scenario. Probably wasn't going to happen. About as probable as picking up a rare and dangerous materia off the ground in the middle of the grasslands.

Well. I found something in the shit pile, actually, after they left. It must have fallen out of that one soldier's pocket when he slipped on the ladder. It was nasty, covered in guano and warm to the touch, but it was still insanely valuable. A smooth red orb that fit in the palm of my hand. A summon materia.

So you see why I might be a little frantic.

* * *

 **i dont know shit about chocobo shit. or iguana s**

 **boy this all came out of my ass its all shit lmao**

 **pfff im sorry**

 **please leave me some feedback if y'got any. doesn't have to be nice feedback. anything. im _d_ es _pe_ rat _e_**


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